Sociological theory would give you what are class contradictions, how they emerge in a society, how they sustain, how they create the corresponding class consciousness and how the class structure makes the dominant class manipulate power in a such a way that, class persists and perpetuates. Even though many people denies the existence of class as such, rather want to stick to the term status groups, there were prominent sociologists who spoke of the interrelationship between caste, class and power like Andre beteile.
Even though our research was not a sociological research, the evident class contradictions in the society drew us towards the subject. We wondered how true the sociologists were when they spoke of the dominant class and their mentality when we ourselves met these rural people. The class contradiction can be easily felt with their opinions over the MGNREGA in their region. We met nearly 200 MGNREGA workers in the Kolanalli Gram panchayat. For them the MGNREGA is a boon which has helped them to live a meaningful life. When we met the farmers, they were furious over the issue and didn’t spare the govt, as well as the manual labourers.
The Farmer’s point of view can be summed up as follows
- Land labourers are lazy and they don’t want to do a tough job even if they are paid Rs. 200 a day.
- Agriculture will die if the MGNREGA continues.
- The govt. is using NREGA to decrease the profits of the farmers, there by making the farmers to sell their land to corporate in the future, by the way they are laying foundation for the corporate farming.
- They actually pay more wages than the MGNREGA wage of Rs. 100 a day, but still the people do not have the attitude to work.
The workers points of view can be summed up as:
- The farmers do not give more than Rs. 80 for most jobs.
- There is no job for at least 5 months a year in the farm for all.
- As the marginal farmers also work in the large farmers field for lesser wage, the landless labourers who demand reasonable wage is ignored.
- There are few old age people who are jobless for at least 8 months a year.
- They say when there is work in the farm they will first go there and will come here only after finishing it.
- The farmers select only young persons and persons with good physique to work in their farms and reject the others and hence many go jobless most of the time.
- Farmers use insecticides and latest technologies as promoted by the agricultural board which in turn reduces the need for the manual labourers.
The striking feature is that the labourers come from nearly all the castes in the area. They jointly in a single voice abuse their own caste people, but here they see them as upper class; the owner class; the rich class, not their own caste people.
At least among the NREGA workers there is no distinction of caste evident, at least when they work. The class feeling asserts itself whenever their class is in threat. We can see the importance of the economic necessities of a man in decision making.
No comments:
Post a Comment